Sherlock's choice
by I'm Nova
Summary: What is reality? What is mind palace? By now, Sherlock Holmes doesn't care anymore. (And if you wonder, the toy is historically accurate.)


_Disclaimer: I don't own a thing. A.N. This is for AtlinMerrick's porn challenge, prompt Past and Future. Enjoy (I hope)!_

Sherlock's choice

There's an old story about a man dreaming he was a butterfly so vividly he wasn't sure if he was indeed a man or a butterfly dreaming of being a human instead. Sherlock Holmes suffers from a similar quandary. With a powerful mind palace, whose smallest details have been chosen with great care, and drugs enough, what is real and what is imagination starts to blend together.

Is he a Victorian detective dreaming of a future where his techniques are widespread in the police, though people are still pants at actually using it? A future where 'inverts' are accepted…to the point where they'd be allowed to marry, just like any other person in love? A future where, no matter how wildly he indulges in his wish-fulfilment, he still can't imagine his Boswell, the man he quietly loves with all his heart, loving him back, even if his histrionic tendencies paint the man's wife with the darkest colours, as a downright murderous villain? (She might as well have shot him in the heart. It would have hurt less.)

Or is he a 21st century consulting detective, quietly pining for his flatmate and blogger, dreaming of a time when their feelings would have a very pressing reason to go unspoken, even if John had actually loved him back? Escaping the risk of jail (and the rather high chance of dying in there) would be a very sensible reason to stay in the closet and go around yelling one's heterosexuality to anyone willing to listen. Or not yelling it, because homosexuality would never be assumed without a good reason to suspect, and John would never offer it. It would be less painful than falling for a straight man _again_ (why do all men Sherlock falls for have to be straight) or one so deep in the closet, even with all the loud support from anyone who's ever met the sleuth, that he could as well be king of Narnia.

It finally comes to the point where it doesn't matter anymore. Sherlock Holmes has picked the only reality he'll acknowledge. The one he wants to live in all the time. If it happens to be the correct one, he's the luckiest man on Earth. If it's not…then he's probably in a coma, stubbornly taking refuge in his mind palace, but he'd rather they kill him than find a way to forcibly wake him.

It starts a night – apparently like so many others. Watson is used to his nightly, discordant concerts (actually, John is too). What his Boswell doesn't know is the origin of that. No Stradivari (God, no!). But Holmes, consulting detective, is still a man. With…impulses. And living with a way too enticing flatmate, these impulses must find a way to be assuaged. If self-abuse leads to a diminution of one's faculties...well, he has enough intelligence that he can make more allowances than the average man.

How does this relate to music? Very simply. Take a ball (he's worked his way up to a billiard one, currently). Tie it to the end of a violin string. Insert the ball in your behind. And…voila. Now, if you make the string vibrate, as any good violin string is born to do, the vibration will be transmitted to its attachment. The result is, frankly, extremely pleasurable. Quite a few times, he managed to reach his own crisis without any additional touch or stimulation. Though that might be because, like his perceptions are keener than most people's, his body seems to be more sensitive.

Sherlock doesn't think anything of 'unwinding' this way, getting home after a drawn-out case that took both all their energy for a week, during which sleuth and Boswell got barely any sleep. When an outraged flatmate gallops down and slams his door open, starting to scream something about 'Right to sleep' before words die in his mouth, the detective is so deep in his own fantasy (fantasy inside a fantasy? Who knows) that he doesn't notice and is caught red-handed.

If Watson goes mute, he – realising what's happening in this reality – lets out a sharp yelp.

"Holmes…what are you doing?" his love asks, his voice now barely a whisper.

"You're a doctor and a man. I'm sure you can surmise," he groans huskily, red not from pleasure or exertion but embarrassment now, hoping the floor might kindly open and swallow him. And still, his damned cock doesn't abate in the least – if anything, it has a mind to show off.

"I…well, yes, but I…didn't think you would," Watson replies, still softly, not looking away, as if ensnared.

He should have a right to privacy, shouldn't he? Not that he wants John to go away, but… they can have this discussion – and their inevitable parting – tomorrow, can't they? So he snaps angrily, "Because you're an idiot."

"Of course I am," his love agrees, but without bitterness, or even shock anymore. There's laughter in his eyes, and in his voice too, after the sentence. "I've been terrified so long that you'd read me, tried so hard, that I didn't even think it possible that you'd share my…disposition," he continues then.

The puzzlement finally manages to shock the sleuth out of the fog of arousal, "Disposition? For what?" he queries. The answer should be obvious, of course, but the implied sentence is so absurd he almost expects to hear the doctor talking about the tendency to keep odd hours, or liking his tea with honey.

"I'm not entirely an invert," Watson says, and why he needs to state the obvious or add an useless adverb is anyone's guess, "I can appreciate the female form, and it's definitely safer, so I do my best to keep at it. But I understand the pleasures of the male body…and your own, Holmes, has been a secret obsession of mine for so very long." His voice is rough, and full of desire.

Holmes fell asleep, didn't he? He must have. This can be nothing but his own fevered imagination – wild wish fulfilling , like that groundbreaking Austrian physician insists most dreams are.

But when Watson…no, John, asks, "Can I?" almost reverently, after getting at eye-level with his hard prick, all he can do is nod. If it's a dream, why not give in? If it's insanity, he doesn't want to recover his senses.

What follows seems certainly real enough – the eager sucking, John manoeuvring the toy outside of him, with a last shrill thrill, to replace it with his own hot flesh, the pleasure reducing Sherlock to babbling his beloved's name, any other word forgotten. They eventually fall asleep still entwined, the long case and recent exertion catching up with them.

And they wake up the same way, to reciprocal declarations of love. Sherlock Holmes doesn't care anymore. He has no idea if this is mind palace, or a long, wonderful, impossibly drawn out dream – a deeper level of mind palace still. This is *his* reality, and he won't leave it as long as he lives. Woe to anyone who tries to rip him from it.


End file.
